Iron Horse Bicycle Classic eager for 50th anniversary in 2022

Saturday, May 29, 2021 5:00 AM

A year delayed but years in the making

Mike Elliott, front, led the peloton up the valley and won the 1972 Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, the first official race. Elliott is pictured here racing the train ahead of Tom Mayer, the inspiration behind the race, and Ron Moore. The picture of the cyclists racing the train helped the event skyrocket in popularity after its first year. In 2022, the IHBC will celebrate its 50th event. (Courtesy photo)

As soon as the 45th Iron Horse Bicycle Classic finished in 2016, organizers started to think about the 50th.

While that golden anniversary should have come this weekend, 50 years after bicyclist Tom Mayer first challenged his brother, Jim, in a race between bike and train from Durango to Silverton, it instead will come in 2022 – 50 years after co-founder Ed Zink first helped Tom Mayer put together a 36-rider event as a kick-start to tourism season.

The COVID-19 pandemic canceled the 2020 edition of the Memorial Day weekend spectacle that is the second-longest continuing cycling event in the United States. A toned down 49th edition of the IHBC will now ride on Saturday and Sunday.

“We held off opening registration and planning this year as long as possible because the COVID needle kept moving. It’s good to know now that, from a COVID standpoint, we are in good shape and it won’t stop us from having this 49th event,” said IHBC director Gaige Sippy. “To have the ability to get the 49th off the ground is fantastic so that we can really get ready for that 50th next year.”

Zink had long looked forward to the 50th anniversary before he died of a heart attack in October 2019. Sippy has doubled down on his commitment to the IHBC since the death of his mentor and will aim to bring his vision to life in 2022.

The IHBC asked for public comment in 2019 on what participants would like to see at a 50th anniversary. Always changing through the years to stay on top of the latest trends in the cycling world, many events have come and gone, and some long lost are likely to return for the 50th, even if for only one year.

The Roostmaster mountain bike race at Chapman Hill drew a television audience to Durango during Iron Horse Bicycle Classic weekends in the early 1990s. The one-of-a-kind spectacle could return for the 50th anniversary event in 2022. (Courtesy of Yeti Cycles)

That includes the famous “Roostmaster” on Chapman Hill, which was televised in 1993 by Prime Sports Network and by ESPN in 1994. That event lined up mountain bikers to complete laps on a course that started with a hill climb followed by a downhill slalom, a water jump and then a sprint to the line each lap. At the end of each circuit, the last three riders across the finish line were eliminated. After two heats and a final, a champion was crowned.

“That was a crazy event being televised and with a big crowd,” said Ned Overend, a former mountain bike world champion and five-time Iron Horse road race winner. “It suited some of us better than others, like John Tomac and people who had BMX backgrounds. It showed in the races. Bringing that and the downhill stuff at Chapman Hill back for the 50th, it’s going to be a great way to help launch the Iron Horse into its next 50 years, and I hope everyone comes back for that big celebration.”

Along with the Roostmaster at Chapman Hill, Sippy also aims to bring back dual slalom racing under the lights at the in-town venue.

The 2018 Iron Horse Bicycle Classic BMX racetrack traveled on east Ninth Street, East Second Avenue across Main Avenue and to Narrow Gauge Avenue in Durango. Spectator-friendly events in downtown will make a comeback for the 50th anniversary in 2022. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald file)

BMX had its big show in downtown Durango during the 2017 and 2018 events, drawing spectators to the high-flying sport. It also could make a return in 2022.

The IHBC will aim to bring back downtown road circuit racing to give true road cyclists another event besides the road race. In past years, the IHBC would crown omnium road champions who competed in the road race, criterium and time trial. But as participation in the Memorial Day time trial dwindled and fewer cyclists looked to participate in the Sunday circuit race, a longer gravel ride was born to add to Sunday’s mountain bike event that famously rips through the bar at Steamworks Brewing Co.

From left: Alister Ratcliff, Kip Taylor and Christopher Blevins in the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic men’s pro criterium in 2014. Downtown circuit racing has played a big part in the IHBC in previous years and could make a comeback after a multiple-year hiatus for the 50th anniversary event in 2022. (Durango Herald file)

Perhaps the biggest addition to the 50th could involve the town of Ouray, Silverton’s northern neighbor across Red Mountain Pass. While a longer pro race from Durango to Ouray isn’t in the cards, the IHBC had been working with Ouray in 2019 to consider an additional IHBC road ride that started in Ouray and finished in Silverton.

“I would like to do the Ouray-to-Silverton on the same day we do Durango to Silverton,” Sippy said. “We already have the passes closed going from Durango to Ouray, and most people don’t get on Red Mountain Pass from Ouray to Silverton during those hours because they know they are going to get stopped in Silverton. U.S. Highway 550 is so quiet at that point, I think we can do it.”

Sippy said preliminary talks have been held with Colorado State Patrol and Colorado Department of Transportation about a Ouray-to-Silverton ride.

“What has changed is the town manager in Ouray since we last had conversations,” Sippy said. “Looking at the 50th coming up for us, we’d like to see if the new town manager is interested in being involved with us and having that weekend tourism bump for them, as well.”

The 2020 edition was slated to have a fat-tire criterium race in downtown Durango for mountain bikers, similar to what is seen at Epic Rides mountain bike races across the country in an event that fills downtown sidewalks with spectators. That would have been on Friday night after registration during the downtown party at Buckley Park.

That event did not carry over to the condensed 49th edition, though Sippy hopes to make it work in 2022. This year, the IHBC also scrapped the Cruzer Crit ride for costumed cyclists parading around downtown as well as family-friendly events, such as the kids race. The goal is to bring all those traditional events back, including the mountain bike race’s ride through Steamworks, for the 50th anniversary after taking a hiatus this year.

Ned Overend said he hopes fellow former world champion John Tomac reprises his role as a Roostmaster star at the 2022 Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, when the event celebrates its 50th anniversary. Tomac won the men’s event in 1995 and 1996, while Juli Furtado won the women’s races. (Courtesy of Giant Bicycles)

“The 50th is going to be incredible,” said Durango’s Todd Wells, a three-time mountain bike Olympian who spent time on the IHBC committee from 2019-20 during the planning phases for the 50th. “An event like the Iron Horse that incorporates road, mountain, BMX and gravel, everything Durango does in the cycling world they do a great job with. By this time next year, hopefully COVID is under control and is an ancient memory for us and we can have this giant celebration of cycling and Durango that Ed Zink would have wanted.”

Zink’s surviving wife, Patti, said she hasn’t been involved with IHBC planning since his death. But she has been thrilled to see the passion of Sippy and the rest of the organizers going into an event that meant so much to her husband through 48 years of his life. And she is eager to see all of Zink’s friends and many of those he inspired return when the IHBC plans to honor her late husband next year.

“Ed would have been ecstatic,” Patti Zink said. “He started thinking about the 50th after 45. He finished that milestone and started dreaming of what it could look like and what it would do for the town from a publicity standpoint. He wanted to get Durango more on the map again in cycling because we have fallen off a bit. He saw the 50th and what is going on with the bike park and county fairgrounds plan at Durango Mesa Park as a boost and a way to remind the world what Durango is as a cycling community.”

As for Tom Mayer, he said he wouldn’t miss the 50th anniversary of the event he inspired when he first raced brother Jim, a brakeman on the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad line, from Durango to Silverton.

“I definitely want to come up for the 50th,” said Mayer, who resides in Albuquerque. “I can do 40 miles on the mountain bike right now, but not the road bike. I gotta get back to training for the 50th. I am 72 now, but I know I can still do it and won’t use age for an excuse.

“It’s such an awesome event, and I want to do it. I want to beat the train again at the 50th.”

jlivingston@durangoherald.com

Tom Mayer came to the finish line at the top of Coal Bank Pass by himself in the first official Iron Horse Bicycle Classic in 1972. The race was inspired by his quest to ride from Durango to Silverton faster than the train on which his brother, Jim, was a brakeman. Tom Mayer plans to ride in the IHBC in 2022 to commemorate the 50th edition of the event. He will be 73. (Courtesy photo)